“I would like to make Xmas happier for the children in some really poor family,” a reader wrote the Toronto Daily Star.

Volunteers Kris Turk, left, and Paul Abdool assemble the contents to be packed at Santa's Secret Workshop in Toronto this week. This year is the Santa Claus Fund's 108th campaign.

The Toronto Star's Barb Mrozek walks you through Santa's secret workshop where 45,000 boxes are prepared for The Toronto Star Santa Fund by staff and volunteers for delivery to children around Toronto who might not otherwise receive any gifts.

A reader writes: “Editor of the Star. Can you help out this suggestion? As one of, I believe, a large number in Toronto, I would like to make Xmas happier for the children in some really poor family . . . The point is this: the trouble, and often difficulty, in getting in touch with the deserving ones. Can you through the Star bridge the gap?” Signed, H. Long.

It is December 1906. The fetid slums of Toronto’s St. John’s Ward overflow, huddled in the shadow of the city’s booming commerce, its department stores stuffed with seasonal plenty. The labouring man counts himself lucky to have a job at slave wages.

Beneath him, the destitute.

Above him, the waist-coated ruling class set to enjoy an Edwardian Christmas.

The Simpson’s catalogue features Santa Claus on its cover. The T. Eaton Co. has done the same. Pictures of singing tops and tin trains and Daisy air rifles beckon to the children of the well-to-do.

Little ones write to the Toronto Daily Star. “My dear Santy — This time I want mokisuns, tipe-rightter . . . funny books like lulu and lander . . . snow shose and lots of candy. I am goin to leave you som cookies and milk in the great.”

The Daily Star, a penny paper, is preoccupied. Its publisher, Joseph E. Atkinson, contemplates the entwining of abundance and want.

Others in the city are similarly absorbed. The hotel association announces that no longer will it distribute a flask of whiskey to each and every patron on Christmas morning. Instead, the proprietors will donate $10 apiece to be distributed to charity. The goal for year one: $1,460.

Joe Atkinson runs Mr. Long’s letter on the paper’s front page. The Star has been doing its own investigation along the same lines, readers are informed. The names of more than 100 children have been gathered. The Star planned to play Santa Claus to see that “each one of the children whose names we have should not undergo the grief of finding an empty stocking on Christmas morning.”

Mr. Long’s suggestion plants a seed. Perhaps the Star could be that bridge to the needy, between those who have and those who have not. Perhaps there are others like him. Such readers are asked to get in touch with the paper immediately. “We will in the meantime endeavor to extend our list of children who have no prospects of a visit from Santa Claus,” the paper writes. “There are many hundreds of little folks in this wealthy city, and in this prosperous year, to whom Christmas and Santa Claus are unfortunately meaningless terms.”

Time was tight. Mr. Long’s letter ran Dec. 12.

Christmas Day. Imagine. Less than two weeks hence. The grey-gowned, white-capped nurses from the mission on Hayter St. swept through St. John’s Ward, knocking on doors, bestowing Santa’s cheer, a Star reporter in tow. “Nationality, creed or color hindered not the giving of the Santa Claus fund,” went the Boxing Day report. “Distinctions were swept away, and the ‘deserving poor’ sounded the keynote of the night.”

To the east, from Sherbourne to the Don River, the rector of Trinity Church loaded a sleigh with parcels and took a Star man along for the ride. “Something from Santa Claus,” was the Star man’s line, as he knocked on little cottages, one by one. The paper did not report the total sum raised, but it did proudly state that more than 100 families — 373 children — received parcels, a tripling of the paper’s initial plan.

It was a testament to the power of the group, of coming together.

Something to think on, even now, though more than 100 years have sped past.

Christmas in modern times is, as the writer Adam Gopnik notes in his rumination on winter, a “complex inheritance.”

“Our recuperative winter is one in which renewal and reversal, anxiety and abundance, epiphany and uneasiness are knotted together. The questions it asks remain: Are abundance and altruism linked? Are capitalism and caritas a part of the same burden, the same carol or song?”

Caritas. Charity.

It would be cheering to think that our shared responsibility has lessened.

But that’s not the case.

“Each year at this time of year we learn of more and more children in our community who will receive little or nothing at all at Christmas,” says Star publisher John Cruickshank.

For more than a century the Star has harnessed the power of volunteer elves, packing first hundreds, then thousands of Santa boxes to be distributed throughout the city. This season, 45,000 underprivileged children aged 12 and under across Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Ajax and Pickering will receive a Santa box. And a good-sized box it is too, with candy and a toy, a hat and mitts, socks and a warm shirt. Infants receive a sleeper or baby set. Two-year-olds receive alphabet wooden blocks. Three-year-olds are treated to a fishing game. All games are chosen with both fun and learning in mind. A toothbrush and toothpaste are included for those aged 4 to 12.

With military precision the boxes are moved to 45 depots throughout the city. It’s a monumental task, all done by volunteers. “Each year we find an amazing number of people willing to help, in big ways and small, to bring a bit of joy to these children,” Cruickshank says. “The people who give to the fund and those who donate their time to help pack and distribute the gift boxes are part of the reason why our community is seen as one of the most caring anywhere.”

We can all help. I’m put in mind of a recent survey of Canadian gift giving in which a third of donors said they would have given more, but feared that the funds would not be used efficiently. There’s no redirection of funds here, no salaries, no overheads to be borne by you. All funds, every nickel, goes into those boxes.

We have set a goal this year of $1.6 million. That doesn’t seem like much, when you consider what the hoteliers of Toronto raised more than a century ago.

In the weeks ahead, we will be bringing you stories of the ways in which the fund has touched the lives of Torontonians.

In the meantime, please join us in delivering cheer to the less fortunate. Surely we can sing this song, this carol, together.

About the Santa Claus Fund

The Toronto Star Santa Claus Fund is a children’s charity that provides gifts for underprivileged children at Christmas.